Question: My computer--or, I should say, the programs and
information files it contains--has become indispensable to my
business. What's the best method for backing up these files,
just in case my hard drive crashes or, worse, I'm hit by fire,
flood or theft?

Name Withheld

Via the Internet

Answer: Backing up your computer files is much like
purchasing insurance--a necessary evil. It's one of those ideas
that makes a great deal of sense, is obviously important, is
insisted upon by every computer manual and how-to book, and yet is
postponed, avoided or forgotten by too many people.

As anyone who has been around computers for a time can tell you,
probably from personal experience, not only can it happen to you,
you need to plan as if it will happen to you. The problem is
becoming all the more urgent, too, as the capacity of personal
computer hard drives moves into the billions of bytes. Clearly,
that's a lot of floppy disks--far too many to serve as a
convenient backup method. And you need to back up files often, at
least once a week if you're adding and deleting lots of
important data every day.

Fortunately, technology offers many choices: magnetic tape
cartridges and a growing variety of so-called removable disks. The
options differ in capacity, convenience and price. Tape cartridge
drives, the venerable old standby, can be added to any
Windows-compatible PC for less than $150. They can store as much as
3.2GB of your hard drive's files on a single $20 cartridge
that's a little smaller than a deck of cards. The main
disadvantage: Tape drives read and write data at a rate of about
19MB per minute. Given the huge capacities of today's PC hard
drives, you may want to schedule your backup sessions during lunch
or at night.

Removable disk drives, on the other hand, copy several megabytes
per second onto disk cartridges that are about the size of a small
book. But the costs are higher and capacities lower: Iomega
Corp.'s popular Zip 100 drive, for instance, lists for $149.95
and stores 100MB of data on a cartridge that retails for $149.95
for a 10-pack. SyQuest's $149 EZFlyer stores 230MB on a $24.99
cartridge, and its $299 SyJet drive crams 1,500MB on a $125 disk
that's the size of a floppy disk. A major upstart in this
market is Avatar Peripherals Inc., which offers a product called
Shark 250. Selling for $249.95, it uses 250MB disks that go for
$39.95 each. The 10-ounce device is designed for use with laptop
computers, drawing power from the computer's internal
batteries.

What's particularly handy about these removable disks is
that they locate and retrieve data at practically the same speed as
the standard hard drives in personal computers. That means you
could use these drives as extensions of your hard drive, storing on
them all files related to a single project. By using multiple disk
cartridges, you, in effect, gain a hard drive of infinite capacity.
This is also a good way to keep important business files safe from
curious kids.

What about backup software? All these drives come with software
that helps you manage the backup process. For instance, you can
choose to make copies of only those files that have been altered
since the last backup--a handy way to keep backup times and file
sizes to a minimum.

Question: I'm running a mail order business, and I
often need to send faxes to hundreds of customers at a time.
I've heard there are service bureaus that handle this kind of
job. How does using such a service compare with doing the faxing
myself?

Elizabeth Bennett

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Answer: Sending faxes to multiple recipients is called
fax broadcasting, and it is certainly one of the most
cost-effective methods for reaching out to customers and prospects
with fresh information about products, price changes or special
offers. In general, the cost for faxing a few pages runs below the
cost of first-class postage. There are several approaches you can
take, each with its pluses and minuses.

Mass faxing from your fax machine can be
surprisingly inexpensive, points out Peter Davidson, a
Burbank, California, fax industry consultant. It's mainly a
matter of choosing the right long-distance company. Shop
around, and you can pay as little as 10 cents a minute for domestic
calls and about 7 cents more per minute to reach Western
Europe.

The downside? It's not much fun punching in a long list of
fax numbers on a fax machine's limited control panel, and
there's no way to personalize the cover page for each
recipient. In addition, lengthy broadcasts can tie up a phone line
for long periods of time. And finally, inevitably, a certain number
of faxes on your list won't get through--typically because of
busy signals or someone's fax machine having run out of paper.
When that happens, the machine will alert you, but you'll have
to resend those faxes manually.

So, why not use a PC? Certainly, that makes it easier to create
and manage long lists of numbers. Fax programs
from Symantec Delrina Group and Global Village Communication,
among other brands, are designed to do just that, as well as many
other fax-related tasks. These programs are usually bundled with
PC- and Macintosh-compatible fax modems, which can be bought
starting at just under $100 and are quite easy to install and set
up.

Generally speaking, though, computer faxing is less
reliable than using a fax machine: You'll find that as many as
20 percent of your fax calls won't go through because of
technical incompatibilities between the computer hardware and the
fax machines at the other end of the wire. That rate can be greatly
improved, however, if you're willing to spend $500 or so for
one of the many "intelligent" fax boards available for
Windows-compatible PCs. These boards rely less on your
computer's central microprocessor chip and therefore can
better accomplish the precise timing of signals required for
faxing over imperfect telephone lines.

Finally, there are fax service bureaus, which can do
just about any fax-related task--for a price. The typical standard
service lets you automatically broadcast a fax message to any list
of numbers which you'll have to provide beforehand. After that,
there are many options to choose from: You can have the
service's computer prepare a personalized cover letter for each
of your customers. Or, if it's vital for some legal or
regulatory reason, for example, that no one receives your broadcast
before anyone else, some services can transmit as many as 10,000
faxes at once--each via its own phone line. And most service
bureaus now let you either fax your original message to them or,
for maximum image quality, e-mail it to them in the form of a word
processing or graphics file generated by any of the popular PC or
Macintosh programs.

Plan on paying as much as 30 cents per minute for the most
advanced fax services, in addition to the set-up fees that can run
as high as $50. Some companies have begun offering substantially
lower prices, which they achieve by using the Internet to move
clients' faxes across long distances at a very low cost. That
may sound overly complicated, but the technology works. The only
problem is that the Internet as a whole is considerably less
reliable than the standard telephone network. So, if your faxes
absolutely must get there on time, Net-based faxing isn't for
you--not yet, anyway.

Where can you find the fax service bureau that's best for
you? Check your local Yellow Pages, or take a look at the Web,
where most services are now advertising. A good place to start, in
fact, is Davidson Consulting's Web site (http://www.pdavidson.com ), where,
among lots of useful information about business faxing, Davidson
also maintains a nationwide list of service bureaus.